Thursday, June 25, 1998 Last modified at 4:32 a.m. on Thursday, June 25, 1998

Houston addresses bad air woes

HOUSTON (AP) - As Houston struggles to avoid surpassing Los Angeles as the nation's smog capital, speakers at an air quality conference Wednesday said the entire eastern half of Texas is going to have to chip in by cleaning up its skies.

Eckels is one of the leaders of a coalition formed to support a state proposal to require cleaner-burning fuels throughout East Texas.

Barry McBee, chairman of the Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission, said that reducing pollution throughout the region could help put a dent in pollution counts in the Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth areas while keeping smaller cities within federal ozone smog guidelines.

Wednesday's conference focused on what the eight-county Houston metropolitan area needs to do to meet strict federal clean-air standards by a government-imposed 2007 deadline. Some pollutants, such as smog-inducing nitrogen oxide, must be reduced by more than 80 percent over the next decade.

Though the Houston area's pollution levels have improved since the early 1970s, smoggy Los Angeles is cleaning up at a faster clip. So far this year, ozone smog limits have been eclipsed 12 times in Houston compared to four times in Los Angeles.

Clouds of Latin American smoke this spring made bad air days even worse, giving Houstonians normally not sensitive to heavy smog an eye-irritating dose of misery.

"Literally going outside on a hot summer day can be risky business for asthma sufferers," Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Carol Browner said Wednesday. "Even healthy people who go outside and exercise (on high-smog days) run the risk of problems."

Critics say pollution could drop dramatically if it weren't for old industrial plants exempt from state emissions restrictions enacted in 1971. Under a voluntary TNRCC program, more than 40 companies with grandfathered plants have pledged to improve pollution prevention.

"We need compliance now to the Clean Air Act to stop our family and neighbors from dying at the hands of profit-making industry," said Ms. Anderson, who was among about 30 protesters outside the conference.